Genesis 2:17 - God warned Adam and Eve: in the day that you eat of the tree of knowledge of good/evil you will surely dieGenesis 4:8 - Cain killed his younger brother, AbelGenesis 4:23-24 - death was regarded the fitting punishment for murder - capital punishment offenses cutting off from the peopleGenesis 5:5 - Adam died hundreds of years after Abel diedGenesis 25:8 - death is when one breathes his last breathGenesis 49:29 - death is referred to being gathered to one's people
Genesis 47:29, 49:29 - death is referred to with burial instructionsJoshua 23:14 - death is going "the way of all the earth."Psalm 23:4 - Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.Psalm 44:22 - Yet for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.Proverbs 14:12 - There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.Ecclesiastes 2:14 - ... one event happens to us allIsaiah 25:8, Hosea 13:14,
1 Corinthians 15:55-56 - "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

Biblical information on death is sometimes physical by appearance (no longer breathing) as Genesis 25:8
Other Biblical information on death is by revelation, such as Genesis 2:17 or Daniel 12:2

* Daniel 12:2 Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
* Daniel 12:13 An angel tells Daniel at the end of his book: "As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to recieve your allotted inheritance."

Second Death
The "second death" (Revelation 2:11) is the everlasting perdition of the wicked (Revelation 21:8), and "second" in respect to natural or temporal death.

THE DEATH OF CHRIST is the procuring cause incidentally of all the blessings men enjoy on earth. But specially it is the procuring cause of the actual salvation of all his people, together with all the means that lead thereto. It does not make their salvation merely possible, but certain (Matthew 18:11; Romans 5:10; 2Co 5:21; Galatians 1:4; 3:13; Ephesians 1:7; 2:16; Romans 8:32-35).

The idea that the "second death" (Revelation 20:14) is in the case of the wicked their absolute destruction, their annihilation, has not the slightest support from Scripture, which always represents their future as one of conscious suffering enduring for ever.

The supposition that God will ultimately secure the repentance and restoration of all sinners is equally unscriptural. There is not the slightest trace in all the Scriptures of any such restoration. Sufferings of themselves have no tendency to purify the soul from sin or impart spiritual life. The atoning death of Christ and the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit are the only means of divine appointment for bringing men to repentance. Now in the case of them that perish these means have been rejected, and "there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins" (Hebrews 10:26,27).

According to Genesis 2:17, God gave to man, created in His own image, the command not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and added thereto the warning, "in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Though not exclusively, reference is certainly made here in the first place to bodily death. Yet because death by no means came upon Adam and Eve on the day of their transgression, but took place hundreds of years later, the expression, "in the day that," must be conceived in a wider sense, or the delay of death must be attributed to the entering-in of mercy (Genesis 3:15). However this may be, Genesis 2:17 places a close connection between man's death and his transgression of God's commandment, thereby attaching to death a religious and ethical significance, and on the other hand makes the life of man dependent on his obedience to God. This religious-ethical nature of life and death is not only decidedly and clearly expressed in Genesis 2, but it is the fundamental thought of the whole of Scripture and forms an essential element in the revelations of salvation.

The theologians of early and more recent times, who have denied the spiritual significance of death and have separated the connection between ethical and physical life, usually endeavor to trace back their opinions to Scripture; and those passages which undoubtedly see in death a punishment for sin (Genesis 2:17; John 8:44; Romans 5:12; 6:23; 1 Corinthians 15:21), they take as individual opinions, which form no part of the organism of revelation.

Death is seldom connected with the transgression of the first man either in the Old Testament or the New Testament, or mentioned as a specified punishment for sin (John 8:44; Romans 5:12; 6:23; 1 Corinthians 15:21; James 1:15); for the most part it is portrayed as something natural (Genesis 5:5; 9:29; 15:15; 25:8, etc.), a long life being presented as a blessing in contrast to death in the midst of days as a disaster and a judgment (Psalms 102:23 f; Isaiah 65:20).

But all this is not contrary to the idea that death is a consequence of, and a punishment for, sin. Daily, everyone who agrees with Scripture that death is held out as a punishment for sin, speaks in the same way. Death, though come into the world through sin, is nevertheless at the same time a consequence of man's physical and frail existence now; it could therefore be threatened as a punishment to man, because he was taken out of the ground and was made a living soul, of the earth earthy (Genesis 2:7; 1 Corinthians 15:45,47).

If he had remained obedient, he would not have returned to dust (Genesis 3:19), but have pressed forward on the path of spiritual development (1 Corinthians 15:46,51); his return to dust was possible simply because he was made from dust (see ADAM IN THE NEW TESTAMENT).

Thus, although death is in this way a consequence of sin, yet a long life is felt to be a blessing and death a disaster and a judgment, above all when man is taken away in the bloom of his youth or the strength of his years.

There is nothing strange, therefore, in the manner in which Scripture speaks about death; we all express ourselves daily in the same way, though we at the same time consider it as the wages of sin. Beneath the ordinary, everyday expressions about death lies the deep consciousness that it is unnatural and contrary to our innermost being.

2. The Meaning of Death:

This is decidedly expressed in Scripture much more so even than among ourselves. For we are influenced always more or less by the Greek, Platonic idea, that the body dies, yet the soul is immortal.

This revelation by degrees rejects the old contrast between life on earth and the disconsolate existence after death, in the dark place of Sheol, and puts another in its place. The physical contrast between life and death gradually makes way for the moral and spiritual difference between a life spent in the fear of the Lord, and a life in the service of sin. The man who serves God is alive (Genesis 2:17); life is involved in the keeping of His commandments (Leviticus 18:5; Deuteronomy 30:20); His word is life (Deuteronomy 8:3; 32:47). Life is still for the most part understood to mean length of days (Proverbs 2:18; 3:16; 10:30; Isaiah 65:20). Nevertheless it is remarkable that Prov often mentions death and Sheol in connection with the godless (Isaiah 2:18; 5:5; 7:25; 9:18), and on the other hand only speaks of life in connection with the righteous. Wisdom, righteousness, the fear of the Lord is the way of life (Isaiah 8:22,22; 11:16; 12:6; 13:14; 14:27; 19:23). The wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in his death (Isaiah 14:32). Blessed is he who has the Lord for his God (Deuteronomy 33:29; Psalms 1:1-2; 2:12; 32:1-2; 33:12; 34:9, etc.); he is comforted in the greatest adversity (Psalms 73:25-28; Habakkuk 3:17-19), and sees a light arise for him behind physical death (Genesis 49:18; Job 14:13-15; 16:16-21; 19:25-27; Psalms 73:23-26). The godless on the contrary, although enjoying for a time much prosperity, perish and come to an end (Psalms 1:4-6; 73:18-20; Isaiah 48:22; Malachi 4:3, etc.).

The righteous of the Old Testament truly are continually occupied with the problem that the lot of man on earth often corresponds so little to his spiritual worth, but he strengthens himself with the conviction that for the righteous it will be well, and for the wicked, ill (Ecclesiastes 8:12-13; Isaiah 3:10-11). If they do not realize it in the present, they look forward to the future and hope for the day in which God's justice will extend salvation to the righteous, and His anger will be visited on the wicked in judgment. So in the Old Testament the revelation of the new covenant is prepared wherein Christ by His appearance hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel (2 Timothy 1:10). See ABOLISH . This everlasting life is already here on earth presented to man by faith, and it is his portion also in the hour of death (John 3:36; 11:25-26). On the other hand, he who lives in sin and is disobedient to the Son of God, is in his living dead (Matthew 8:22; Luke 15:32; John 3:36; 8:24; Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13); he shall never see life, but shall pass by bodily death into the second death (Revelation 2:11; 20:6,14; 21:8).

5. Death in Non-Christian Religions and in Science:

This view of Scripture upon death goes much deeper than that which is found in other religions, but it nevertheless receives support from the unanimous witness of humanity with regard to its unnaturalness and dread. The so-called nature-peoples even feel that death is much more of an enigma than life; Tiele (Inleiding tot de goddienst-artenschap, II (1900), 202, referring to Andrew Lang, Modern Mythology, chapter xiii) says rightly, that all peoples have the conviction that man by nature is immortal, that immortality wants no proof, but that death is a mystery and must be explained. Touching complaints arise in the hearts of all men on the frailty and vanity of life, and the whole of mankind fears death as a mysterious power. Man finds comfort in death only when he hopes it will be an end to a still more miserable life. Seneca may be taken as interpreter of some philosophers when he says: Stultitia est timore morris mori ("It is stupid to die through the fear of death") and some may be able, like a Socrates or a Cato, to face death calmly and courageously; what have these few to say to the millions, who through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage (Hebrews 2:15)? Such a mystery has death remained up to the present day. It may be said with Kassowitz, Verworm and others that the "cell" is the beginning, and the old, gray man is the natural end of an uninterrupted life-development, or with Metschnikoff, that science will one day so lengthen life that it will fade away like a rose at last and death lose all its dread; death still is no less a riddle, and one which swallows up all the strength of life. When one considers, besides, that a number of creatures, plants, trees, animals, reach a much higher age than man; that the larger half of mankind dies before or shortly after birth; that another large percentage dies in the bloom of youth or in the prime of life; that the law of the survival of the fittest is true only when the fact of the survival is taken as a proof of their fitness; that the graybeards, who, spent and decrepit, go down to the grave, form a very small number; then the enigma of death increases more and more in mysteriousness. The endeavors to bring death into connection with certain activities of the organism and to explain it by increasing weight, by growth or by fertility, have all led to shipwreck. When Weismann took refuge in the immortality of the "einzellige Protozoen," he raised a hypothesis which not only found many opponents, but which also left mortality of the "Korperplasma" an insoluble mystery (Beth, "Ueber Ursache und Zweck des Todes, Glauben und Wissen (1909), 285-304, 335-48). Thus, science certainly does not compel us to review Scripture on this point, but rather furnishes a strong proof of the mysterious majesty of death. When Pelagius, Socinus, Schleiermacher, Ritschl and a number of other theologians and philosophers separate death from its connection with sin, they are not compelled to do so by science, but are led by a defective insight into the relation between ethos and phusis. Misery and death are not absolutely always consequences and punishment of a great personal transgression (Luke 13:2; John 9:3); but that they are connected with sin, we learn from the experience of every day. Who can number the victims of mammonism, alcoholism and licentiousness? Even spiritual sins exercise their influence on corporal life; envy is a rottenness of the bones (Proverbs 14:30). This connection is taught us in a great measure by Scripture, when it placed the not yet fallen man in a Paradise, where death had not yet entered, and eternal life was not yet possessed and enjoyed; when it sends fallen man, who, however, is destined for redemption, into a world full of misery and death; and at last assigns to the wholly renewed man a new heaven and a new earth, where death, sorrow, crying or pain shall no longer exist (Revelation 21:4).

Finally, Scripture is not the book of death, but of life, of everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord. It tells us, in oft-repeated and unmistakable terms, of the dreaded reality of death, but it proclaims to us still more loudly the wonderful power of the life which is in Christ Jesus.